Red Hat Tour Seeks Feedback From Community

Red Hat, Hoosiers, and Food

November 7, 2002

By
Brian Proffitt

The little boy in the restaurant high-chair looked at the approaching
crowd of men with wide-eyed wonder, tinged with just a little bit of
two-year old fear. He had probably never seen so much facial hair in
all his life.

As I walked past him, I leaned over and whispered in his ear "don't
worry, son, they're just geeks! Make no sudden moves." And, with a
wink to his parents, I moved on with the parade of "technically
advanced" men and women.

We were all here, some 75 strong, to meet and greet the latest arm of
the Red Hat marketing department: the five-man crew of the bright-red
RV of the Red Hat Road Tour 2002, which had pulled up to this
restaurant on a cold, drizzly Indianapolis day for the sole purpose of
meeting with us, Linux users of Indiana.

Many of the people there were members of the Central Indiana Linux
Users Group (CINLUG), but not all--several participants were coming
from businesses, universities, even churches to hear what Red Hat's
representatives had to say. We were all there to hear the Gospel
According to Red Hat.

What one would have expected to be a Red Hat presentation instead
turned out to be a very spontaneous and casual discussion amongst
experienced Linux users (with a few newbies tossed in for fun) about
what was good, bad, and ugly about Red Hat and all things Linux.

Of course, there were a few bumps at the start. Very quickly the Red
Hat crew learned of two Indiana laws: the first being that it always
rains on Election Day. The second (and actual law): you can't buy alcohol in
Indiana on Election Day until after the polls close at 6 p.m. So,
beers were out, to be replaced by smoothies and soft drinks.

The next bump was the turnout: three times as many people showed up than
expected, so the actual eating did not begin until a whole other
section of the restaurant was cleared out.

Undaunted, the gathering continued.

Eventually, four members of the crew--Jeremy Hogan, James McDermott,
Dave Lawrence, and Jonathan Opp--took positions at each of the
long tables and held court, answering questions and asking them in
turn. (The fifth member of the crew, the driver Cookie, held court in
the bar smoking a cigar, explaining to the not-very-busy bartender
what Linux was all about.)

I ended up sitting next to McDermott, a Client Engineer who
by his own admission looks like a biker dude. It doesn't faze his
fellow diners, since he looks like most of the under-30 men from the southern
part of the state. McDermott, who can put away an astonishing amount
of food, seemed a man very happy to be where he was right at that
moment as he answered questions between bites.

The goal of the tour, he explained, was not so much as getting the
word out about about Red Hat, but trying to get in touch with a vital
part of Red Hat's customer base: the everyday user.

Considering that Red Hat routinely does business with Fortune 500
companies and Wall Street investment firms, this sort of statement
came as a little bit of a surprise.

Ideally, McDermott continued, "we're looking for specific input
on [Red Hat] 8.0." From the desktop to the configuration tools to the
apps, he wanted to hear what users around the country had to say about how the
desktop-oriented release performed.

Thus far on the tour, he lamented, "we've been getting generally good
comments." But what he really wants, McDermott explained, are
specifics. Nitty-gritty ideas, suggestions, and critiques that the
team can take back and apply to the next development cycle of Red Hat.

Things in the enterprise field, McDermott explained, were pretty well
known. "We are trying to keep in touch with the community."

McDermott mostly seemed to get his wish, as people at his table bandied about
topics as diverse as LVM, Apache on Solaris vs. Red Hat,
hyperthreading Xeon processors, to what makes people in the RV
physically ill.

Not every session has been as informal as this one. The RV crew has
attended LUG meetings and made presentations, met dedicated followers
in a K-Mart parking lot, and attended a town hall meeting to advocate
the use of Linux in a Virginia school system. Different groups have
been approaching the team for help and knowledge in a variety of
ways and the team has adapted well. In Indiana, we just like to sit
around, eat, and shoot the--er, breeze, so the crowd got what they
needed from the team's visit. After talking to team leader Hogan, it
was clear that the team got what they needed from us.